It is the intention of the author of this article to present the theoretical and legal views of Sigmund Freud and Emil Durkheim and to place them in the context of classical texts on political-legal theory. Both thinkers, rather associated with sociology or psychology than with law, treated law as one of the most important reference points in their social concepts. In both cases, we are dealing with the treatment of the social order as transcendent to the empirical individual, and at the same time created by society. At the same time, the law is supposed to impede the emancipation of the individual and to allow the individual to have a real influence on the creation of power structures. At the same time, despite numerous analyses of the theoretical-legal views of these thinkers in the European scientific literature, this is the first such analysis in Polish. In addition to presenting Freud’s and Durkheim’s views, it opens up the possibility of not only situating them among political-legal theories, but also points to perspectives on the operationalisation of these theories – as well as their possible social implications. To this end, the following article juxtaposes their theories with the traditions of legal positivism as represented by Hans Kelsen and Herbert L.A. Hart – two authors who were inspired by Freud and Durkheim respectively.

The article examines the application of the principle of the active role of the court in the administrative proceedings of the Republic of Kazakhstan and foreign countries. The attention is paid mainly to the identification of the main function and the system of application of this principle. The scientific novelty lies in the study of important subordinate guiding principles, the influence of which is decisive when applying the principle of the active role of the court in the administrative proceedings of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The authors conclude that the judge should apply the principle of the active role of the court in order to have a fair trial within a reasonable time.

This paper discusses judicial duty of improving the law on epistemic grounds and claims in that regarding this obligation, it is possible to give a place to free speech from an epistemic point of view. As a requirement of having epistemic agency, judges like other human beings have epistemological responsibility. Different from the others’ responsibility, judges’ responsibility is connected to their duty of improving the law, which is required by their job as well as the idea of the rule of law and judicial professional principles. Judges should improve the law’s capacity to guide the conduct of its citizens, who are obligated to obey the law. Improving the law also improves the delivery of justice. The ways of legal interpretation and justification are important to improve it. While applying the law, judges can find the law unclear or they may encounter some norm conflicts. In these cases, they
should resolve them to keep the law ‘legally in good shape’, which should meet epistemological requirements. When fulfilling this obligation, judicial free speech on epistemic grounds should not be limited.

In this article, the Polish institution of administrative entry to the area in order to carry out repair, maintenance or removal of failures of transmission equipment will be presented. It entitles to public-law interference in the constitutionally protected property right, under the condition that the determinants of its application have been met. The aim of the analysis is to indicate that the expropriation nature of this regulation, which is a specific form of expropriation, requires a strict interpretation of the premises leading to the restriction of the ownership for purposes related to transmission activity. An attempt will be made to demonstrate that the restriction of the ownership made on the basis of an administrative decision meets the expropriation standards applicable in the Polish legal system. The presented issues are not only of purely theoretical importance, but will also be used in the application of legal regulations by both public administration authorities and transmission companies applying for a permission.

The purpose of this publication is to show and analyse the issue of transsexual people who feel the need to reassign their sex assigned at birth and their biological sex due to a gender identity disorder. The paper is a polemic against the views presented in the case-law practice, suggesting the uniform and statutory regulation of transgender people’s situation in Polish law, drawing from the achievement of the ‘Principles’ written in Yogyakarta. One of the main postulates resulting from this publication concerns the regulation of the conditions and procedure of the legal sex transition that guarantee transsexual people the enjoyment of their fundamental rights and freedoms on equal terms with other members of society. The article is supposed to contribute to combating discrimination and increasing awareness in the area of transsexuality which is viewed stereotypically and is unknown to most people, with the exception of a small group of experts who fight against exclusion that conditioned by a different gender identity.

The resolution of the municipal council on establishing the rules and conditions of situating the objects of street furniture, advertising boards and devices, gates, their dimensions, quality standards and kinds of materials, which they can be made of (it is called thelandscape resolution’ and also the ‘advertising resolution’ in literature), is a legal tool that serves landscape protection. However justified and necessary it is, the legal definition of terms that are basic for its content is accompanied by certain structural doubts that translate into the practice of applying law. In this article, the authors identify those flaws of the applicable regulation and make suggestions of their own legal solutions, especially introducing the legal definition of the term ‘advertising medium’ (replacing the current ‘advertising board’ and ‘advertising device’), as well as the definitions of individual types of media, to the legal order. The dogmatic and legal analysis is concluded with a draft of the appropriate legal provision.

The author’s goal is to analyze the concept of distributive justice and the possibility of its normative formulation in the Polish constitutional order. The starting point of consideration is the principle of social justice expressed in Article 2 of the Constitution and the model of distributive justice developed on its basis. The author, using formal-dogmatic, theoretical-legal and comparative-legal methods, points out the features of contributive justice and examines the normative and practical possibility of changing the paradigm of the constitutional fair state through a novel approach to justice focusing on equitable contribution, instead of the hitherto dominant distributive pattern. The result of the research conducted is the conclusion that, for reasons justified by the constitutional system and the praxeology of the workplace, contributive justice expands the concept of constitutional social justice in a valuable and desirable way.

Many of the principles of taxation that were developed in the first half of the 20th century, such as the arm’s length principle and the definition of the term “permanent establishment” (PE) in determining the tax position of international business operations, when applied to the business models of the 21st century, often result in the under-taxation of businesses that are otherwise fully compliant with the laws as presently written and implemented. Compounding the problem is the fact that these rules and principles of taxation are broadly recognized and are enshrined in a wide network of tax treaties. This makes the task of modifying or updating these rules and principals extremely difficult. Using legal-dogmatic and legal-theoretical methods, the author will show that present attempts to tax e-commerce transactions unilaterally are not effective and that, under present conditions, even organizations such as the EU are unable to address the problem at hand. The OECD project, commissioned by the G-20, which seeks to create a set of international e-commerce taxation rules, faces some very serious difficulties – largely because a well-established “set in stone” complement of internationally accepted laws, rules, and regulations is serving to block the development of new, more appropriate rules. This phenomenon has become known as the lock-in effect or legal impossibilism. In order to effectively address this phenomenon, lawmakers on a global basis must understand the mechanisms that are blocking the effective evolution of business taxation.

The aim of the article is first of all an attempt to organize the ways of understanding the “form (of conventional actions in law)” and the contexts of the use of this term in detailed legal sciences. The author also considers the issue of performing conventional actions in law by non-linguistic actions and omissions, as well as the issue of significance of form ecognition in the context of identifying conventional actions in law. The results of the research presented in the paper (apart from their cognitive value) are to serve the development of the theoretical concept of conventional actions in law and, as far as possible, to put in order the dogmatic-legal discussion concerning the title issue.

The purpose of the article is to propose a concept of the collective right to food which may turn out to be essential in fighting hunger and malnutrition on a global scale. International agreements, including Pacts on Human Rights, overlook the rights of indigenous peoples by corresponding to the individualistic, state-centric, consumeristic and commercial vision of the right to food. An approach, which is based on the objectives of critical studies on law, to the official dogma of the right to food (developed within expert and intergovernmental bodies in the form of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) allows for claiming that the dogma is less legitimized than the collective right to food (defined in the Decla-ration of Atitlán) resulting from the indigenous peoples’ practice. This is why, remaining in the sphere of the official, Grotian international legal order, it should be acknowledged that the indigenous peoples’ right to food defined in the article is a part of third-generation rights (next to the second-generation individualistic right to food) while remaining strictly connected to the right to self-determination and the right to development. It is a result of the long-term practice of those peoples. The above-mentioned proposal of the third-generation right to food has not been applied to the legal doctrine so far. Its value is the opportunity to develop and study the concept of food sovereignty that allows one to more effectively combat hunger and malnutrition on a global scale as compared to the previous actions of international communities.

The rule of law does not govern all human interactions. There are times when the state bypasses legal constraints, as documented by the World Justice Project. Other times, jurisdictions may be mutually unfriendly and refuse to enforce foreign laws. Blockchains create trust between contracting parties at the individual level, enabling them to transact freely and increase consumer welfare. Blockchains can only supple-ment antitrust if the legal constraints do not impede their development. The law should thus support the decentralization of blockchains so that blockchain-based mechanisms may take over (even if imperfectly) where the law does not apply. With that in mind, we justify the attractiveness of that approach by showing that blockchain causes an increase in the number of transactions by creating trust (Part 1), and that it may overall increase the decentralization of economic transactions (Part 2). The law should take into account where it applies (Part 3). We conclude afterward (Part 4).

The purpose of the article is analyse how essential the issue of personal data protection is in the procedure of leading a collective dispute. In order to make some findings in this matter, the dogmatic and legal method was primarily used and the provisions of the Act on Resolving Collective Disputes and the GDPR were analysed in the first place. The findings made lead to the conclusion that despite the fact that the dispute itself is collective, both parties (both the trade union and the employer) process a range of personal data during the dispute. Due to the specifics of the procedure and the fact that the Act was essentially created before the GDPR came into force and it was not amended for the inclusion of broadly understood requirements for the correctness of the processing of personal data, it is necessary to rely on general principles resulting from the GDPR, and a certain indicator of it may be opinions issued by the PDPO.
The issue raised in this paper has so far been included in certain statements from the doctrine, but its practical significance and importance for social partners who execute their constitutional right to lead collective disputes fully justify further research in this direction as well as the fact of findings resulting from that research reaching various target groups (apart from the above-mentioned social partners, representatives of the judicature and science should also be reached).

The article is devoted to the study of the correct application of the evaluative concepts contained in the norms of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Attention is drawn to certain difficulties in the application of the evaluative norms in the Convention: despite their objective necessity and usefulness, they create a room for the law enforcement entity’s own discretion up to subjectivism in resolving specific cases; they serve as an objective obstacle to the unification of the case law of the ECtHR and this creates preconditions for unequal implementation of ECtHR judgments in the national legal order; they cause the risk of errors in the application of the provisions of the Convention by the competent authorities of the Contracting States. It is established that the application of legal norms containing evaluative concepts is challenging not only owing to the specific properties of the evaluative concepts themselves, but also due to the peculiarities of adjudication by the ECtHR when applying the evaluative norms. The relevant case law of the ECtHR as well as examples of national legislation are analysed in support of these theoretical conclusions. Since the lack of uniform application of the evaluative norms of the Convention causes divergent use of the ECtHR’s judgments in the domestic judicial system, it is advised to follow a number of rules for reasoning of decisions by the domestic court. These rules will serve as a certain guarantee against ambiguous implementation of ECtHR judgments at the national level.

The publication examines the legal nature of wars, looks into the law of war genesis, reviews its conventions, as well as identifies the aim, objectives, causes together with the consequences of Russia’s military aggression on February 24, 2022; it provides a testimony on the war of aggression against Ukraine and identifies its threats to post-war international law and order. The aim of the article is to determine the background, nature, fundamentals and nature of the war the Russian Federation launched on February 24, 2022 against Ukraine within the context of confrontation with the values of Western democracy. Historical-legal dialectical, comparative-legal and system-structural methods, as well as methods of formal logic (induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, abstraction and concretization, etc.) were used to study the issues. The application of these research methods entails a cross-sectoral scientific nature.
Wars have accompanied the entire history of mankind. Since the 17th century the theoretical foundations of the law of war have been laid, which enshrined in international laws and customs of warfare (Geneva Conventions, Hague Convention, etc.) since the 19th century, thus forming the international humanitarian law. After World War II, violations of the latter by the belligerent party are viewed by the world community no less harshly than the mere war. The paper questions the purpose, reasons, conditions and intermediate consequences of the war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. Obviously, the military aggression and the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022 marked the beginning of the de facto war, under a specific formal definition by a Russian official as a “special military operation” instead of naming it an attempt to avoid legal responsibility for war crimes committed in Ukraine. The article analyses the aggressive nature of this war on the part of the Russian Federation, demonstrates numerous violations of international law conventions by the Russian armed forces during the military invasion and temporary occupied territories in Ukraine. It emphasizes that the law of war has always been replaced by signing a peace treaty and relevant international agreements, which entails the obligation to severe the political, economic, and legal responsibility of the state violating international humanitarian law. The paper reviews the key institutions and legal tools for bringing the Russian Federation authorities to justice for the war crimes committed in Ukraine. So far, the President of Ukraine, the Supreme Council of Ukraine, and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine have managed to apply legitimate international legal
mechanisms, primarily the International Criminal Court and the UN Security Council, to prosecute Russia for violating the international humanitarian law and committing war crimes in Ukraine. At the same time, on the Ukrainian territories currently liberated from the Russian army’s occupation (Bucha, Gostomel, Irpin, etc.), it is already possible to implement a special mechanism of justice, which consists in the collaboration between national and international experts: specialists, investigators, prosecutors, and judges to collect objective and impartial evidence of gross violations of international law and war conventions in Ukraine. It is obvious that for Ukraine today both the victory and just punishment for the committed and continuing committed war crimes on its territory are important. The aftermath of World War II’s “Never Again” now requires, as never before, its effective guarantee and protection

The subject of the article is an analysis of the legal solutions governing the princi-ples of handling medical waste and municipal waste produced by people under quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic together with an analysis of the impact of the instruments specified therein on the existing legislative solutions and the prospective effects of the adoption of these regulations. The paper analyses the current legal framework, highlighting the uniqueness of the legal institutions used (in the context of a province governor’s orders excluding local law regulations or statutory obligations, and contracts specifying the manner of performance of public tasks entrusted), as well as the impact of these regulations on the subsequent operation of waste management facilities. At the same time, a number of practical problems that may arise in connection with the application of solutions provided under the existing law have been brought to light.

The article analyses known facts concerning the corruption of deputies in Ukraine. The negative influence of various oligarchs on legislative activity is shown in it. It was established that the manifestations of corruption in legislative activity are significantly easier due to its imperfection and lack of proper regulations.
The principle of the inevitability of punishment as regards the deputies is formal. Several recommendations have been formulated based on the research in order to improve legislative measures.
Numerous corruption-related facts concerning the deputies indicate significant deformations of legislative activity for the purpose of illegal enrichment. It was shown in the paper that the improvement of the legislative process has not been implemented properly.
There is every reason to claim that the purpose of individual deputies’ legislative activity is to form unclear relations between business and the government on special conditions to which citizens do not have any access. Some of the deputies use those privileges not for the good of society, but for personal enrichment.
It is noted that the inevitability of the punishment of deputies for the crime of corruption is rather pretended. Activities which are meant to fight corruption in that category of higher national officials are being implemented quite slowly.
An adoption of a number of acts improving legislative actions the purpose of which is to fight corruption among deputies is proposed. The elimination of illegal relations between the government and business is a priority.

The COVID-19 pandemic, placing societies and governments in an exceptional situation in every respect, has had an impact on the legal order of individual countries. It pressed them, on the one hand, to take swift and decisive actions and, on the other hand – to a necessary thorough assessment and considering of the costs and consequences, both legal and economic, of the introduced measures, often related to the constraints of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. Although Sweden during the pandemic seemingly chose a path different from other European countries, keeping social life largely unaffected, in its essence this strategy did not differ much from those used in other countries. The aim of the article is to present the solutions adopted in Sweden and to analyse the Swedish strategy against the background of constitutional civil liberties.

The paper analyzes the concept of integrity of a judge from the perspective of the virtue jurisprudence. There are the judicial virtues specified and described, including integrity as one of the elements of the virtue of justice. Subjective and objective integrity are distinguished, as well as personal, professional and institutional integrity. Integrity of a judge is understood as personal integrity combined with professional integrity and also institutional integrity in which values and aims of the profession are taken into account. Virtue jurisprudence does not provide clear directives for solving legal disputes but it emphasizes the necessity of referring to the dispositions of a judge in order to understand fully the process of judgment. On the grounds of virtue jurisprudence, the integrity of a moral subject if assumed which provides the foundation for trust in the profession of judge and does not allow for the separation of social roles, assuming the possibility of reconciling them with the use of prudence. The problem of conflicting virtues, namely integrity and impartiality in the context of judicial review is discussed on the example of the judgment of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal of October 22, 2020, K 1/20 which illustrates judicial activism. The considerations concerning this example bring about the conclusion that in the most controversial political and moral disputes, political prudence suggest the direction of the virtue of judicial restraint due to deference of democracy and the division of powers.